5 Mind-Blowing Things Found in Our Own Solar System One of our running themes here at Cracked is "Man, space is just weird as hell." It's easy to forget that, after mankind went to the moon and found out it was just a boring, dusty ghost town. Space is full of mysteries, and you don't have to go far to find them. #5. nasa.gov Most storms are easily recognizable from space. nasa.gov What is that, what is that?! That there, friends, is a close-up image taken of a perfectly ordinary day on Saturn's north pole. It's not exactly small, either -- each wall of the hexagon is around 8,600 miles long, wider than the Earth's diameter. Above: Saturn rocking a nipple piercing. The walls of the hexagon are the most vigorous part of the giant storm called the eyewall, and the area in the middle is the eye of the storm. nasa.gov "You know of what I speak, Gandalf: a great eye, lidless, wreathed in flame." For one, the hexagon on Saturn never shifts from its longitude, unlike any storm ever seen. #4. Getty"No, no, you called the right guy, I just ... #3.
6 Historical Events Happening More Recently Than You Think We define our historical eras, naturally, by things that we associate with them. We started making tools in the Bronze Age, the plague was in the Dark Ages, we strapped dogs and monkeys to rockets in the Space Age, and for a brief time in the '90s people wore shirts that changed color when they sweat. But not everything is so cut and dried; sometimes things that you only thought existed in the black and white world were still around until just a few years ago. For instance ... #6. Via 24-7pressrelease.com First of all, we're not talking about the redesigned VW Beetle that Volkswagen introduced in 1998. Via Weheartit.comThe peace and love is so thick, it's sticky. You don't see the classic Beetle around much nowadays, with the exception of those ancient collector cars carefully maintained by people who literally have rebuilt them with a mixture of gum, tinfoil and marijuana residue. But Actually ... Or, they could have just bought one from the factory as recently as 2003. #5. Getty Getty"P.S.
6 Pieces of Fan Art That Are Better Than the Original If 37 percent of the Internet is porn, then the other 63 percent must be people complaining about stuff. A movie that disappointed; a game that's taking too long to come out; George Lucas. Well, sometimes the companies or creators will actually address their fans and say, "You think you could do better than us?" And sometimes the fans will answer back, "Um, actually, yeah." #6. Star Wars Fan Remaster Looks Better Than the Real Thing Unless you still have a working VCR, the only way to watch the original, theatrical versions of Star Wars is buying the out-of-print 2006 DVD box set, which insultingly comes with the original movies as mere bonus features on a separate disk (meaning, you had to pay for the Special Editions to get them). But what else are fans supposed to do? How the Fans Made It Better: A fan from the U.K. named Adywan did that and much more. ESBR Preview ESBR PreviewHmm. ANHR Visual Comparison ... making the lasers hit the right places ... #5. How the Fans Made Them Better: #4.
5 Insane Explanations for Stuff Your Body Does Every Day It's weird: Much of what is going on inside our own bodies is still a complete mystery to us. For instance, we pointed out a while back that science has no idea why we yawn. Then you have things like crying, or laughter, which are parts of our everyday lives, but upon closer examination make no sense at all -- why would we signal sadness with eyeball drool? And the theories as to why we do some of these things are downright bizarre ... #5. Hiccups are a series of stupid, diaphragm-driven breath convulsions that bother you for a while, then vanish just as inexplicably. But there is a scientific consensus on exactly how annoying hiccups are. If you think of your body as a temple for the pantheon of your bodily functions, hiccuping would be the trickster god running amok and mooning people for shits and giggles. The Surprising Truth: Hiccuping may be useless to you now, but some scientists think it played a huge part in what got you there in the first place. Think much further back. #4. #3.
6 Things From History Everyone Pictures Incorrectly Nobody Dressed How You Think They Dressed The Perception: So already it's pretty clear that if we don't have photos laying around of the historical period in question, we're basically just guessing. And that's interesting considering how many figures from the distant past we think we have a perfectly clear image of. For instance, ninjas looked like this: Vikings looked like this: And as anyone who's ever attended a Thanksgiving event at an American grade school knows, pilgrims looked like this: The Reality: The ninja outfit is ridiculous, if you think about it. Hidden inside those bushels are like a million katanas. On rare occasions when they needed to move through the dark undetected, they still didn't wear black. As for the Vikings, the one single thing we know them for--wearing huge horns on their helmets--isn't true. Viking helmets: built for sensible pillaging. As for the pilgrims, they were simple, farming folk, and as such wore clothes that made sense for the job. Source. Oh hell yeah
6 Insane Discoveries That Science Can't Explain We like to feel superior to the people who lived centuries ago, what with their shitty mud huts and curing colds by drilling a hole in their skulls. But we have to give them credit: They left behind some artifacts that have left the smartest of modern scientists scratching their heads. For instance, you have the following enigmas that we believe were created for no other purpose than to fuck with future generations. The Voynich Manuscript The Mystery: The Voynich manuscript is an ancient book that has thwarted all attempts at deciphering its contents. It appears to be a real language--just one that nobody has seen before. Translation: "...and when you get her to put the tennis racket in her mouth, have her stand in a fountain for a while. There is not even a consensus on who wrote it, or even when it was written. Why Can't They Solve It? Could you? Don't even try. As you can imagine, proposed solutions have been all over the board, from reasonable to completely clownshit. Our Guess:
10 Animals You Won't Believe Are Closely Related Thanks to the know-it-all from second grade, we're all aware that dolphins and whales are mammals, not fish. But it's probably been a while since you've pondered just how incredibly, mind-blowingly weird it is that you and whales were the same animal more recently than whales and sharks. Or to put it in chart form, you and whales split up somewhere in the big tangle of bio diversity up top labeled "Age of Mammals" while whales and fish haven't been the same animals since way the hell down ... ... here where you see the word Selacchi. So how is it that our evolutionary cousins ended up with flippers and fins exactly where fish have them and we ended up needing swimming lessons? Courtesy of Getty Images." Turns out it's the same reason birds and bats both ended up flying around on wings: convergent evolution, the smarmy term for when completely unrelated species develop similar traits. Image By Glen Fergus What it looks like: You don't need your wife standing next to you screaming, "MOUSE!
7 Theories on Time That Would Make Doc Brown's Head Explode There are a few things in this world that we can always rely on as constants: The sun will always rise each morning, the seasons will always change and time will inevitably march forward at its predictable clip. Except the sun doesn't actually rise, seasons are disappearing and time ... well, see, time is tricky, too. For example ... #7. We May Not Live in the Present What if we told you that what you think of as "the present" is actually slightly in the past? The delay isn't much -- what's 80 milliseconds between you and your brain? Photos.com"Being a brain is kind of boring, but we've got lots of time for pranks." But that's not the freaky part. Photos.com"You really don't want to see the copies." Not convinced? The bizarre real-world implication is that the taller you are, the further back you live in the past, since it takes longer for the information to travel through your body -- and if you're a little person, you live closer to the present. #6. Photos.com"Finally! #5. #4.
5 Ridiculous Medical Myths You Probably Believe When somebody wants to make you feel OK about your shitty life, they'll usually say, "At least you have your health." If you don't have that, they'll remind you of how easy modern medical advances have made your illness compared to the past. They're not wrong. Anyone who's ever had surgery should absolutely be grateful it wasn't done with a hot poker and a shot of whiskey, as it would have been years ago. But the truth is that most of us aren't exactly doctors when it comes to our knowledge of modern illness. A lot of what we know and believe about how to avoid being sick is based on old wives' tales and approximately as medically advanced as the idea that masturbation causes blindness. For instance, you probably believe that ... #5. Getty What You've Heard When a character has a heart attack on TV or in a movie, he'll (they only happen to men on TV) usually clutch his chest like he's been shot and fall over dead. The point is, heart attacks clearly hurt. The Reality Getty"Hello, Domino's?
The 5 Most Ingenious Worlds Ever Invented by Science Fiction In no other genre is setting as important as it is in science fiction: No matter how intricate the book's plot, or how chisel-jawed that Hollywood manpile on the movie's poster might be, the universe is always going to be the real star. If you strip out the setting from an action film, you'll still have bankable hunks kicking ethnic people in the throat. If you strip out the setting from a literary drama, you'll still have quirky protagonists exchanging meaningful looks while sharing a tragedy together. But if you strip out the setting in even the most classic and well-constructed science fiction properties, you'll wind up with a whole lot of nothing. And if you guessed that this column was going to be just lousy -- absolutely filthy -- with thinly veiled plugs for my own sci-fi serial novel, Rx: A Tale of Electronegativity, the second episode of which just came out this week, you get a gold star!* *Gold star only available with purchase of Rx - Episode 2: The Reservoir. #5. Philip K.